Make Audio-Only Facetime Calls With iOS 7 Beta [iOS Tips]

Facetime is Apple’s video conferencing solution, offering high-quality video chat across any iOS or Mac device. It simply blows away any other solution I’ve tried in terms of quality and ease of use, but it’s always been a video-only proposition, leaving me sticking with Skype for audio-only voice chats.

With iOS 7 beta, however, Apple has given us the ability to make audio calls with Facetime as well, which may cause me to ditch Skype altogether (though there’s still a cross platform ability Skype wins).

Here’s how to make audio calls to other Apple users via Facetime.

Launch the Facetime app on your iPhone with a tap, and then tap on the Contacts button in the lower right. A list of all of your iOS contacts will show up, and you can filter them by typing in the Search field at the top.

Once you’ve found the contact you wish to chat with, tap on their name and then look for the Facetime section. You’ll now see a videocamera icon, as per usual, with a new telephone handset icon, all overlaying the camera input from your iPhone, blurred out in the background. Tap the phone handset icon to begin an audio-only call with your friend.

While in the audio chat, you’ll be able to mute your microphone, put your friend on speaker phone, switch to a video chat, or find other contacts, all from the main in-call screen. When you’re done, simply hit the red End button at the bottom and you’re done!